Aphrodite's Casebook - Love, Sex & Stupidity
by MichelleAppleby
Summary: Short Stories. The Goddess of Love watches us as we go about our lives - and she has a few things to say about what she sees.
1. The Business Meeting

**The Business Meeting**

The man shows up on time.

He is a freelance illustrator. The woman is a company account manager. When the lift doors open in reception and he sees her for the first time, he has to remind himself of this. She's young, good looking, smartly dressed and sexy. Her handshake is firm, her manner professional, but the man has to refrain from gazing into her green eyes. In the short lift ride to her floor, he stares at the buttons, glancing occasionally at her in response to polite small talk.

The woman shows him into a small meeting room and leaves him to fetch papers and two coffees. There is a rectangular table and the man takes a seat near the corner, curious to see whether the woman will sit next to him. The woman returns, smiling and talking, and she takes the seat opposite. The man busies himself with his coffee, the woman rifles through her papers—all the while they talk as though nothing is happening. She slaps a sheet of paper before her and the man opens his notebook and clicks his pen ready to write.

The meeting begins.

A half minute in and the man no longer has to remind himself not to gaze. He listens to what the woman says with a professional ear, asks questions to clarify and notes down information, his mind totally on the job in hand. When the time comes for him to tell her the cost, he looks into her eyes with no thought of their colour and states his price.

The woman looks unhappy. The price is higher than expected. The man suggests she reduce the number of illustrations she's asking for. The woman looks down at her papers, thinking. The man waits.

When the woman looks up, it's as though he's the most wonderful thing she's ever seen. As she talks, she reaches across the table to touch the back of his hand. She gathers up papers and changes seats, taking the chair next to his. He feels her arm brush his as she points and gestures. She holds his gaze as she explains how this is her first important assignment, how she really wants to create a good impression and how much his help would mean to her. The man feels every nerve in his body scream: 'Yes! Say yes! Make her happy and she'll be grateful and you know what _that_ means!'

But the man realises that he knows exactly what it means. His body is keyed up, hopeful, aroused—heart thumping and mouth dry—but there is also a sick feeling deep in his guts. A feeling he knows well. A feeling he was not going to ignore this time. He waits for the woman to finish speaking. Then he takes a deep breath, looks at her with cold eyes, smiles and says:

'Nice try.'


	2. The Feminist

**The Feminist**

Lady, stop banging on about equality.

Oh, I wish I had a mirror on me! The look on your face—like you found a dead wasp in your coffee cup. You clearly think you don't bang on enough, right? You want more E-Quality, the cleaning powder that can wash all your problems away!

Did you notice that? Equality contains the word quality. What do you think the 'e' stands for? How about 'even'? Even-Quality. Not better nor worse, just even. Of the same value. 'Like as unto each other.' That's what the word _means._

No, lady, I'm not sure you do.

You twist it. You misuse it. You wave it around like a club threatening to bash someone's (male) head in whenever things are not going your way. Oh, don't be such a baby. If you lived in the Middle East, all right—but in your culture? You have more freedom than women have ever experienced. Men too, come to that. Not that anyone knows what to do with it, but still—that's another conversation.

Let's begin with a basic tenet.

A group of humans is always going to organise itself into a hierarchy. Always—whether it's two people or a population. Human society cannot function otherwise. No, lady, that's not correct. Two people who are on the same level of the hierarchy are not necessarily equals. What's the difference? Good question.

It's all a matter of context.

Let's take your friend, Carmella. You like her, right? The two of you can talk for hours. Now Carmella is from a family of wealthy aristocrats. Tell me, do you feel inferior? No, of course not. You're friends and equality is the appropriate state for the context of friendship. In fact, _not_ feeling equal to someone is a good sign that a friendship isn't on the cards.

But do you remember the time Carmella asked you to write that piece for her website? Suddenly, your dynamic shifted from equality to hierarchy—she became your client, your boss. That was not a comfortable experience, was it? You hated it when she kept asking you for text changes you didn't agree with. And do you remember when you tried to equalise the situation? She responded by saying, 'Does this mean you want to invest money in my website?' That shut you up quick, didn't it?

Equality wasn't appropriate for that context, not because Carmella has more 'quality' than you, but because she had the end responsibility. People who take responsibility will always be a level above the people who don't, male or female. That's how it works.

Look around and tell me you don't see it too.


	3. The SLG

**The SLG**

Is he in love with you?

What do you mean: 'I think so?' What kind of answer is that? You either feel his love or you don't. Do you feel his love for you? And don't say, 'I think so.'

Sigh.

You really don't know, do you? You're a stupid little girl, did you know that? I don't care what your actual age is—you're still a stupid little girl. No, it's not because you don't know how you feel. I'm not _that_ unforgiving. It because you didn't know how you felt and _you still slept with him._ If your womanhood is something that you value, you don't do that. Ever. I'm serious. There are only two circumstances where a woman should allow a man into her body: When she knows he wants her as opposed to just wanting sex and when she's horny and genuinely doesn't care what the man thinks.

Neither applies to you, does it? In fact, you thought that sex would 'bring you closer together,' didn't you? Or perhaps you thought that if you said no, he'd look for another woman. Were you afraid that would happen?

Sigh.

Honey, I'm sighing because that is what's _supposed_ to happen! That's how it works. The man shows interest and you show resistance. If the man only wants sex, he buggers off to look for an easier conquest. If he wants _you,_ he persists until he's convinced you he's for real. That's his job. That's what men _do. _No, offering resistance does not mean pretending you don't like him. You can show a man you like him and yet still tell him you're not ready for sex, can't you? Dear me, this isn't rocket science!

But you're acting like a stupid little girl and, like most stupid little girls, you think that being in a relationship with a man with make you feel less like a stupid little girl. And because a lot of your woman friends are also stupid little girls who compare notes and award points to each other based on Stupid Little Girl criteria, you all end up with men who despise you.

Yes, your boyfriend despises you. He's got too much ego to see it—what man wants to admit to himself that he sleeps with a woman he has no respect for?—but that's why you don't feel his love. The only reason he stays relatively polite is because you give him regular sex. Take that away and you'd see how _much_ he despises you. Why wouldn't he?

You're a stupid little girl.


	4. The Armchair Casanova

**The Armchair Casanova**

Wakey! Wakey!

Yes, you were. Just because your eyes are open doesn't mean you're not asleep. You go through life asleep—most of you—living in the parallel universe of your imagination.

You want proof?

All right, let's see. Tell me: What were you doing between yesterday evening and this morning? Hmm. No, that's what your body was doing. You took it to the supermarket, bought dinner, went home, cooked it, went to bed, slept, woke up, showered, dressed, walked to the coffee shop and now you're sat talking to me. But where was your mind that whole time?

Thank you.

Yes, the girl who sat next to you. Yesterday, you were sitting on the benches outside the coffee shop and a girl sat next to you. You were reading a book, she was reading a newspaper. A man cycled past shouting at someone only he could see and the two of you watched him. You looked at each other, smiled ruefully, she made a remark, you made a joke, she laughed, you exchanged a few more words and then you went back to your book and she went back to her newspaper. When the coffee shop closed, she cycled away and you went to the supermarket.

But your mind entered a parallel universe—a Groundhog Day universe where the same moment was replayed over and over and over. As your body took its linear path through the world, your mind relived the conversation as it might have gone had you been a little more … a little more what?

Version One saw you being more forward. Version Two saw you being more open. Version Three saw you being flirtatious. You liked Version Three and you found yourself replaying that one—like the favourite part of a movie—until you knew the dialogue by heart. And then your mind took you further into the story, into what happened when you saw each other again, when you kissed each other, when you made love to each other. By the time you walk to the coffee shop in the morning, you've had your first sexual encounter with her half a dozen times.

You're an armchair Casanova. You have love affairs with women in your head. And in this parallel universe you have an amazing record. You never get rejected or hurt, the sex is always mind-blowing and the women always totally adore you. I'm not surprised you want to spend so much time there. What man wouldn't? Right now, I can only think of one.

The man who's fucking the girl who sat next to you.


	5. The Gay Architect

**The Gay Architect**

Be honest, you get quiet pleasure from being offended, don't you?

Don't sniff at me. You stand here in the corner with your glass of mediocre wine sulking because your partner is talking to the other guests rather than running up to you to see what's wrong. He knows what's wrong. He warned you what would happen and now he avoids you because he knows how much you hate it when he's right.

Oops, there it is again. The muttered remark that, despite the noise of the party, your ear manages to catch: 'The gay building.' How can a building be gay? Why are no one else's buildings being described as 'gay'? Well, let's take a wild guess, shall we?

As an architect, you were invited to this event to present your ideas for a leisure palace. You created slides to show the exterior of the building and your designs for the interior spaces, all rendered as 3D photo-realistic computer-generated images. Of course, you don't want to show an empty building, so you incorporate photographs of people. Other architects also did that using silhouettes or standard nondescript figures.

But not you.

No, your leisure palace was populated with men kissing, men holding hands and men touching each other's butts. It was as though Gay Pride had rented the building. Pardon? Yes, I know you didn't just show gay men—there were some very, shall we say, interesting juxtapositions? The two bare-chested men in leather trousers tonguing in front of the old woman in a wheelchair was an especially potent one. The sound of coughing you heard at the lectern was people choking on their wine.

Oh, it's _their_ fault, is it? They're not _open?_ Well, your partner had a problem with those images and he's as gay as you are. Is he not open either? Oh, he's an appeaser? My, how terrible. Imagine going through life being tactful and sensitive to people's feelings.

Your partner wants to come over. Yes, I know he's standing at the drink's table, but he's not stupid. He senses right now that you hate him. Yes, you do. Because he was a witness to your hypocrisy. When he looked at your slides and gave you his opinion—that they would distract from your architectural designs—you responded by saying you didn't care. You claimed that the opinions of … what did you call them? Oh, yes. _'A bourgeois organisation of wannabe intellectuals'_—that their opinions were of supreme unimportance to you; that you didn't give a damn. That's what you said, wasn't it? And now you stand here alone, holding a glass of mediocre wine, wishing that your partner would join you in condemning these people as homophobic bigots.

But if that were true, why would you care what they think?


	6. The Spanish Single Mother

**The Spanish Single Mother**

Older woman, younger man.

It's a hot Spanish afternoon and the woman has put her little boy to bed for his siesta. She and her young English lover have maybe an hour of privacy. They close the bedroom doors (yes, the _hacienda_ bedroom has double doors!), remove their clothes and climb into bed.

There is a knocking from outside. 'Hello?' It's the woman's neighbour, Ana, knocking on the side door of the main house. The woman throws on her silk dressing gown. 'One moment,' she says and steps outside, closing the doors. The man hears Ana's surprise and the two women start to talk in Spanish.

Fifteen minutes later they are still talking.

It's clear to the man that his woman hasn't told Ana he's here, waiting alone in the bedroom. Ana's a nice girl—she would have excused herself by now. He could make a noise; let her know he's here. But Ana would feel terrible, apologise for something that wasn't her fault and his woman would come into the bedroom furious. 'So my neighbours can't come round any more, is that it?' she would accuse. He would argue his side, but he knew how it would end. The woman would say what she always said:

'A relationship just doesn't work like that.'

The man sat in the bed and pondered that statement. It was actually rather brilliant. He could come up with the most rational, logical, articulate argument in the world and yet she could squash it with: 'What you say is true, but a relationship just doesn't work like that.' Why was it so effective?

Because it was based on the assumption that a woman knows how a relationship works and a man doesn't. That a woman is the authority on that subject. And the man realises that he had surrendered that authority to the woman. Why? Because he's the younger man? Less experienced? Without the responsibility of a child? Or maybe because he's English and she's Spanish—a culture that prides itself on its passion and fire? What do the English know of passion? Shakespeare sonnets? Or maybe it was simply because he was a man.

The women have been now talking for over half an hour.

The man smiles, his heart thumping. He has decided on a course of action. He dresses quietly, checks he has everything and stands before the double doors like an actor before the curtain. 'BANG!' The doors open and he marches out. 'I'm going home,' he calmly tells his woman. 'Hello Ana,' he says with a genuine smile. He walks past the house and down the steps to the gravel drive where his car is parked. He's putting the keys in the ignition when his woman tears down the steps and skids up to the car.

Casually, he winds down the window. She apologises over and over. 'It's okay to change your mind,' says the man, 'but next time you must tell me.' The woman nods and he allows her to talk him out of the car. Eventually, he takes her in his arms and kisses the top of her head. He no longer feels like the younger man.

He just feels like a man.


	7. The Wicked Queen

**In Praise of Bad Women**

Yes, you're right, she's a backstabbing bitch.

That's no excuse not to love her.

Do I sound like I'm joking? What do you think women are? Grown up versions of Disney princesses? You watched too many of those films as a kid. Besides, anyone with eyes can see that the Wicked Queen is far sexier than that chubby, rosy-lipped Snow White. The Magic Mirror didn't bloody know what it was talking about.

And now you have your own Wicked Queen in your life. What's more, she's not some remote queen in a castle turret—this queen invites you into her bed and permits you to give her a good pounding on a regular basis. What on earth are you complaining about? How many men would give their eye-teeth to enjoy such royal privilege?

Of _course_ she's not a very nice person. Have you forgotten how the two of you got together? Her friend was into you and she told the Wicked Queen. The Wicked Queen stepped back at first, but after a while with no developments she made her play and you responded with enthusiasm. Now she and her friend no longer speak to each other.

Don't be naïve. The fact that you were not into her friend is of supreme irrelevance to them. Besides, you like it. You like that one woman stabbed another in the back so she could have you. Don't tell me that doesn't completely turn you on.

But how can you love a woman like that?

Simple. By accepting her exactly as she is. Accept that she is arrogant and vain and predatory and untrustworthy; accept it all and love her. Here's a thought: The next time you're in bed and on top of her, stop. Be still, look her in the eyes and tell her everything you see about her—the arrogance of her manner, the backstabbing of her friend. Call her a wicked queen to her face, then tell her you adore her and pound her into the bed. She will love you for that. She will think about you for weeks.

Don't fall in love, though. It is in the nature of queens to tire of their favourites. The day will come when she is looking out of her castle window thinking about something other than you. When that day comes, there will be no conversation. Royal privilege will simply be withdrawn and she will expect you to quietly leave through the servant's entrance.

Accept that too. It's not personal. That is how she's treated all her men and you will be no different. It is who she is and how she operates. See that, accept that and love her anyway. It may sound contradictory to love a woman without falling in love with her, but you will find it's perfectly possible. You may even be surprised at how happy she is able to make you. That's the thing about wicked queens.

They know how to fuck a man in all senses of the word.


	8. The Man Child

**Man Child**

Sir, you ought to come with a health warning stamped across your forehead.

Yes, you! You, with your nice apartment, your foreign trips and your look of boyish maturity. You're a danger to the hearts of women. Well, women of a certain age. Don't get coy. You know exactly what I'm talking about.

Each one of your 'girlfriends'—for want of a better word—fits the same profile. She's beautiful, but not as beautiful as she once was. The days are gone when her biggest problem was wondering which man's offer to accept and it caught her by surprise. Nowadays, the offers are few and less appealing. The phrase 'All the good ones are taken' has particular poignancy for her. She's still young enough to have children, but the clock is ticking.

And then you come along. Good looking, smart, financially independent, no ex-wife, no children—it seems too good to be true. Okay, it may have occurred to her that a man who reaches your age without ever having married might have, um … issues? But still—it's worth a second date, surely?

You, of course, have already decided you want to have her. She's good looking. She's nice. Yeah, having her as a sex partner would be cool. So, on the second date, you bait the hook. I'm not saying you do this deliberately. That's one of the tricky things about you—a deliberate predator would be easier to spot—but because you're not, you slip under the radar.

What you are is a child in a man's body. You have no clue how to function as an adult and you've never had to. You're good at business in the same way a kid is good at football and you see a woman in the same way a kid sees a pet dog—as someone fun to play with when you have nothing better to do.

So, on the second date, you call her to say you're running late—why doesn't she come round to your place while you finish some work? She's only there for ten minutes, but it's long enough for her to see your beautiful apartment, the photos of your trips abroad and to witness you at work. During dinner that evening, you slip in a vague, non-committal sentence that contains the words 'right woman' and 'marriage.' You don't actually connect the dots—and weeks later you will be using that as your defence—but the woman does. And she gets hooked.

It's not that you're devious. You're nowhere near that smart. But after years and years of screwing up with women, you've finally stumbled upon a working formula. Of course, once you have the woman, she makes your life a living hell. You can't understand why she's being so difficult—you never actually promised her anything—but neither are you man enough to cut the line. Whenever she's about to leave, you hint that she might be the right woman after all. The relationship only ends when the woman finds the strength to tear the hook out of her own mouth.

Like I said, you ought to come with a health warning stamped across your forehead.


	9. The Rapist

**Prey and Prayer**

A woman walks alone at night.

It's dark. She's young. The streets are empty. No, wait—can she hear footsteps? She looks around. There is a figure also walking late at night. A man. He's on the other side of the street. No, he crosses. He's now on her side, behind her. Is he walking faster? The woman picks up speed. The sound of her heels echo in the darkness, magnifying the sound of her fear. Why do these damn heels make so much noise? Should she take them off and run? How did she get herself into this situation?

If I were a male human, I might say she should have been aware of the risks. If I were a female human, I would be furious at that opinion. Why should there _be_ any risks? A woman should be able to walk home at night without having to be afraid of men who cannot control themselves. Two opinions. But which is closer to the truth?

This is what I see.

Not so long ago, it was dangerous for both women and men to go beyond the light of the tribal fire. The world was a dangerous place. It still is—just ask animals. A rabbit can't stick its head out of a hole without the danger of a fox biting it off. And imagine an antelope insisting on walking the African plains alone at night—how long do you think she'd last? A safe environment on this planet is the exception not the rule.

But you humans have done pretty well in changing that. You protect yourselves from the elements, you successfully combat disease and the only real predators you have are other humans. In fact, you've got so good at creating environments of safety that you forget you created them. You end up thinking safety is how the world is and danger the aberration instead of the other way around. You see yourselves as civilised beings with an animal side rather than the truth: That you are animals who have learned to be civilised.

You don't believe me? Then look at how men and women choose each other. Do men fall for women based on civilised criteria? Does a woman want to be with a man who has both integrity and bad shoes? No, civilised behaviour is something that must be learned—and most of you learn it pretty well.

Unfortunately, for the woman who walks home late at night, not everybody gets it. The man sees the woman, he feels a primitive need and he doesn't have a civilised thought strong enough to prevent him wanting to feed that need. He pursues her, walking faster without running. She turns a corner. He's about to follow when a police car slowly drives past, one policeman looking at him through the window. The car is gone in moments, but the man decides to go home anyway. Maybe civilised thoughts are not strong enough to kill the need, but fear will do it.

Most of the time.


	10. The Vengeful Mother

**A Mother's Vengeance**

Men don't have children.

No, don't roll your eyes as if I've said something patently obvious. A lot of couples I see don't seem to know this—they say that 'they' have children. But they don't. The woman has the child. The man has whatever she allows him to have.

Some women are generous. They allow the father to participate with the children—to play with them, read to them, spend time with them. They may even insist on an equal share of the donkey work; the nappy changing and other unpleasant tasks. If a man does enough work, he may even feel a legitimate claim on the child, may feel that this makes him a parent of equal importance. This is an illusion. A woman wants to share responsibility not control.

Picture this: A mother in a business suit stands with her husband at a local playground. They chat with other parents while their small son runs around with the neighbourhood children. The boy falls over, scrapes his knee and starts to howl. Both parents run over to the child who looks up, lifts his arms and cries:

'Daddy!'

The man sees the look in his woman's eyes. He hands the boy over and the woman takes him inside. He goes over to the other parents with a sheepish grin on his face. The men smile awkwardly back, the women seem immersed in their own conversations and act like he's not there. For a while he pretends that everything is normal.

But from that day, the man experiences a change in his woman's opinion of him. He's no longer a husband who supports his wife's decision to work—he's a loser whose wife works because he can't earn enough to support them. He's no longer a man who believes in sexual equality—he's a hypocrite who uses Feminism as an excuse not to be a real man. He's no longer a devoted father—he's a wimp who spends time with his son because he hasn't got the balls to pursue real ambitions like normal men.

The man doesn't give in easily. He refutes her arguments, stands tall in his manhood and carries on regardless. So she begins an affair and makes no secret of it. The man finds himself eating dinner with his son while his wife is upstairs on the telephone or he's alone in the house at night, tortured by thoughts of what his wife is doing. He retaliates with everything he can think of save forcing her to leave. She's the child's mother; he can't bring himself to do that.

She has no such compunction. Finally, when he's broken and sleeping on a mattress on the floor of a friend's house, he asks what he did that she should hate him so much. 'You gave me the most beautiful boy in the world,' she said. 'And then you took him from me.

'And I am going to punish you for that.'


	11. The Rules

**The Rules**

Let's talk about the rules.

Do you know which rules I'm talking about? Yes, lady, I'm asking you. No, I'm not asking the men—well spotted. I'm asking you. Yes, just you. Stop fiddling with your hair and look me in the eye. Why am I not asking the men? Now, that's interesting—you don't even know what I'm talking about and already you're trying to shift blame onto them. Do you see how you're doing that, lady? For goodness sake, _leave it alone!_

Let me take you back in time, just a few weeks, to a conversation you had with the man you now call your boyfriend. He wasn't your boyfriend at the time, but you'd both made it clear you found each other attractive and he wanted to move towards an intimate relationship. That's when you told him the rules.

Yes, the rules. Or maybe 'instructions' would be a better word. Imagine you have an instruction manual in your head entitled: 'How To Make Me Happy.' This volume has basic instructions for general operation and additional chapters for more specific areas—'How To Make Me Happy On My Birthday,' for example. The troubleshooting section is of particular interest: Whenever a man does something that makes you unhappy, you add the relevant information to that section. Unless it's covered in one of the other chapters, of course.

Anyway, to get back to that conversation. You're sitting next to a man who has just told you he wants to take things further. It's now your turn. What do you do? What do you want?

You want to be happy, of course! And what's the best way for this man to make you happy? Why, for him not to do the stupid things that all the other men have done in the past. And since he's not a mind reader, the best thing is to explain to him who you are, what you need and what to avoid. You give him instructions.

What does the man do?

He follows them. He follows them to the letter. After all, a computer works by following instructions, so why not a woman? Especially when she herself has told him? She's an intelligent woman—she knows herself, right? She wouldn't make such a big deal about what she needs without knowing what she's talking about, right?

But you don't, do you? It's so ironic. The whole point of instructions is that if you follow them, the thing works. But the more the man follows your instructions, the more it _doesn't _work. So maybe 'rules' is a better word after all. Because something else happens when you don't follow rules.

You get punished.


	12. The Wrong Time

**Right Woman, Wrong Time**

Sigh … you humans.

A man and a woman are in love with each other and yet they are breaking up. Why? Well, here's what I see: The woman is in her mid-thirties and ready to settle down. The man is in his late twenties and is not. And yet he is. And yet he's not. Do you understand? No?

Sigh.

Let's take a look at the young man as a teenager. He observes his world and in particular the adult men who inhabit it. He observes men who get married, father children, support families and nothing more. These men talk about their kids, their family trips and say things like, 'My children are my Number One priority.' He also observes men who become artists, entrepreneurs, musicians, business owners, men who follow their passion, men who make their mark. The teenager admires those men. He wants to be like them. But he also wants to have a family. He wants both.

So he comes up with a plan. He will figure out the field in which he has unique gifts, he will work hard, establish himself and eventually, when he is financially independent, he will be ready to take on the additional challenge of supporting a family. He reckons he will be in his thirties when this happens. He has it all figured out.

But before he reaches thirty, he meets the woman. She's not his first girlfriend, but it becomes clear pretty fast that there is more to her than any woman in the past. Without a conscious decision, he finds himself living with her. It works. She feels that she has finally met her match and he suspects that he feels the same way.

Except it's too soon. What about his plan? His passion? He's nowhere near financial independence. And those men he observed as a teenager—the ones who supported families and nothing more—would he become one of them? A terrifying thought occurs: Maybe these men also had ambitions to be more than providers, but because they met their women too early they got caught in the trap. Is that what happens? Is that how it works?

But he can't kid himself that he's with the wrong woman. With past girlfriends, he had always had the sense that the relationship was time dated, but he doesn't feel that now. The still, small voice whispers that this is the woman he has been longing to meet, that he has prayed for the universe to send him. He doesn't want to say no.

But neither does he want to say yes. The woman is wonderful, but ye gods she can be hard work! There are times he has no clue what to do and no energy to figure it out. Just get away, get away, get away. But when he does, he can't get past the feeling that he's turning his back on something important. What's he to do?

What would you do?


	13. The Woman Through the Window

**The Girl Through the Window**

She's out of your league.

Are you listening, Mister Man? Can you hear me? Are the communication channels open and the receivers switched on? Then let me repeat: She's out of your league.

You knew that the instant you saw her, surely? It didn't stop you wanting her of course—what man wouldn't? She's beyond gorgeous, beyond beautiful, you could talk to her for hours without hearing a word, just for the pleasure of watching her lips move. She's quite something, isn't she? Besides being out of your league.

But would you like to know a secret? Would you like to know the deeper truth beneath the apparent truth? Would you like to come close and have me whisper it in your ear? All right, come close, Mister Man. Come closer. Closer. That's better. Are you ready? Are you listening? All right then, here it is.

She could be yours.

Yes. All yours. Her body, her love, her very soul. How? It's simple. So simple, you won't believe me. Are you still listening? Then here goes.

You have to want her.

Yes, that's it. That's all there is to it. Yes, really. What? You already want her? No, you don't. You saw her, you thought 'Wow!' and you pictured yourself planting a seed in her. An ape or a dog might experience the same thing—that's a reaction to stimuli not a true wanting. If you want this woman to be yours, if you actually want it to happen in the real world, you have to want her on a completely different level.

You have to be smart. Very smart. Extremely smart, in fact. You have to convince her that you desire her more than any other man she knows. You also have to convince her that you're not some pathetic wannabe man. That you're the real deal—a man worthy of her attention. You have to learn how to penetrate her defences before she'll let you penetrate her body and, right now, you don't have a clue where to begin. You have work to do, Mister Man, a lot of work. You may have to put everything in your life on hold while you pursue her. But success is possible, I assure you. To be wanted by a worthy man with such intensity is attractive to even the most beautiful of women. Many men can attest to that. It just takes effort.

Now, isn't that funny? Yes, now you mention it, she does have a bit of a crooked nose. And, yes, she is a bit on the thin side. High maintenance? Oh, without a doubt. She's attractive, for sure, but 'beyond gorgeous' is, perhaps, going a little too far. I won't argue. Now that you've pointed it out, I see it too. Well, who would have guessed?

She was in your league after all.


End file.
